Page 31 - Introduction to AI Robotics

14
1 From Teleoperation To Autonomy
AI Robotics
planetary rovers
vision
telemanipulators telesystems

manufacturing Industrial
Manipulators

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Figure 1.1 A timeline showing forks in development of robots.

placed on the mechanical aspects of the robot to ensure precision and re-
peatability and methods to make sure the robot could move precisely and
repeatable, quickly enough to make a profit. Because assembly lines were
engineered to mass produce a certain product, the robot didn’t have to be
able to notice any problems. The standards for mass production would make
it more economical to devise mechanisms that would ensure parts would be
in the correct place. A robot for automation could essentially be blind and
senseless.
Robotics for the space program took a different fork, concentrating instead
on highly specialized, one-of-a-kind planetary rovers. Unlike a highly auto-
mated manufacturing plant, a planetary rover operating on the dark side of
the moon (no radio communication) might run into unexpected situations.
Consider that on Apollo 17, astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmitt found
an orange rock on the moon; an orange rock was totally unexpected. Ideally,
a robot would be able to notice something unusual, stop what it was doing
(as long as it didn’t endanger itself) and investigate. Since it couldn’t be pre-
programmed to handle all possible contingencies, it had to be able to notice
its environment and handle any problems that might occur. At a minimum,
a planetary rover had to have some source of sensory inputs, some way of
interpreting those inputs, and a way of modifying its actions to respond to
a changing world. And the need to sense and adapt to a partially unknown
environment is the need for intelligence.
The fork toward AI robots has not reached a termination point of truly au-
tonomous, intelligent robots. In fact, as will be seen in Ch. 2 and 4, it wasn’t
until the late 1980’s that any visible progress toward that end was made. So
what happened when someone had an application for a robot which needed